Monday, September 10, 2012

Overbudget.

I have a budget now.

Not just a yarn budget, though there's that. I have a spreadsheet with my estimated monthly total expenses all totted up - rent, utilities, food, various subscriptions - and I try to hold myself to my spending limits. Especially in terms of food. I haven't really settled back down into my academic-year routine in my own apartment yet, so instead of getting groceries and cooking for myself I'm still eating out much of the time.

Today my spreadsheet looks pretty sad, despite the fact that technically I'm still on track for the month. Today was the day I paid the internet and electric bills, ordered flowers to be delivered for my mother's birthday, went out to my favorite brunch place... and figured out the bus route to the nearest LYS, Shuttles, Spindles and Skeins.

Now, I have $50 of wiggle room each month. At first I called it my yarn budget. Then it became my "yarn and books" budget. After that, when I started eyeing video games, it expanded to become "entertainment". Earlier this morning, when I realized there was no convenient place to register the cost of my mother's birthday flowers, it became "miscellaneous".

$50 worth of yarn a month is quite a lot, I would have thought. Downright self-indulgent, actually. But when the yarn has to make room within that $50 to share budget space with books, games, and flower deliveries where the shipping and handling fees cost nearly as much as the blooms themselves?

Knowing this, I wasn't going to buy anything today. No. Not a thing. I was just going to look around and touch yarn. But everything was so lovely inside, and there was so much to choose from, and the longer I stayed the more I thought it would be rude to leave - especially after taking a bus specifically to get here - without buying anything, and besides, I had a new project idea...

Well. I am now very, very slightly over my yarn miscellaneous budget for the month. And what did I buy, you ask?

About

winterlime is a twenty-something grad student who may be slightly more obsessed about fiber arts than is academically healthy. Her greatest weaknesses are kittens, loose-leaf tea, Blizzard games, and people who comment on her blog.